Steampunk vibrator

[Ani Niow] built this steam powered vibrator. It has a milled stainless steel shell with a brass motor structure. The motor is a Tesla turbine made from a stack of Dremel diamond cutoff wheels. This drives an off-center weight to create the vibration. She tested it using a pressure cooker as the steam source. It worked, but became so hot it had to be held using welding gloves. It works just as well with compressed air though. You can see the device at the Femina Potens Art Gallery in San Francisco or later this month at Maker Faire.

“She tested it using a pressure cooker as the steam source. It worked, but became so hot it had to be held using welding gloves.”
Good lord. Looks like a thermal insulator is needed between the motor and the working end. When running on compressed air I’d assume it gets pretty cold.

@ bigsticks: grow up
@ solenoidclock: so go ahead and do it, post if it works

@ sansan: i agree, it crosses a line here
@ wolvenmoon: make an igoogle page and get the hack-a-day app

@ (>’-‘)> ooww! no, wrong, bad minion!

kudos on the overall hack and ingenuity. i’d give it an 8 out of 10. the power issue, steam gets too hot for comfort (unless it’s used to perform a deep tissue back massage, that might be nice as long as there are no burns) and an air compressor gets too noisy. thinking things through, i’d say about a 4. artistic value and making people respond, well that’s a 10. look how many have responded to this. definitely an eye catcher.

there’s nothing practical about a steam powered vibrator. this is clearly a form of artistic expression. it reinforces the fact that women can be both sexually independent, and geeky. i think it’s awesome.

Hihi, woke up this morning and noticed my Flickr was getting a lot of hits from Hack-a-Day and Laughing Squid and was wondering where they were coming from, haha.

To address some of the questions/concerns about it…

I decided on the Tesla turbine because I could build one in the shop and it was more of a universal engine, could potentially run it off of anything that’s pressurised enough. The engine isn’t optimised and currently it takes far too much pressure to run it then it really should and I’ll be doing some experimenting with other designs soon.

This is more of a proof-of-concept/prototype/art piece than truly practical, anything that would work as a a power source is going to be too big and too loud to be sexy, I knew this when going into it.

As for heat, maybe version 2.0 will have one though I’ve not run it off of steam long enough to see how much the heat transfers. When I was machining it I discovered that if I was machining the engine section, it would become really hot but the shaft would only be warm and the head was cool to the touch, and vice-versa. Once I have a more optimised engine I’ll experiment with steam more.

Again, thanks for the comments and feel free to ask if you have any more questions. :)

Hmmm.. I guess it really comes down to personal attitudes as to where you draw the line, but I would in no way consider this entry NSFW, inappropriate or unwelcome. The entry doesn’t contain anything overtly sexual, other than the word vibrator, which is also contained in the haptic compass and bristlebot stories to describe a similar mechanical motion.

Just my $0.02 – obviously there’s a few people who disagree. Personally I think it’s a pretty cool build story.